Q: "lanechtskipt"

[W Brewer]

Playing with the idea of 'camel' & working backwards: assume a calque of
the original Arabic <ship of the desert> or <desert ship>. Then,
<<lanecht>> would have to correspond to 'desert'. This is the tough part.
Assume some cognate of English <land> (we think of as basically arable,
however). Germanic & Celtic cognates imply a "free space" including 'heath,
plain'. Free of trees, like a <lawn> (etymologically identical to French
<lande> 'wasteland' < Celtic 'heath, plain'). <<Lanecht>> could correspond
by this reasoning to English *land-ish (an outlandish idea, actually).
Whence "the landish-ship", meaning the camel as metaphorized as "the ship
of the wasteland". Wonder if the Arabs view their homeland as a wasteland?

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